In 2014, wind-generated energy made up 39.1% of Denmark’s overall electricity consumption, according to the country’s Climate and Energy Ministry. The figure makes the country the world’s leading nation in wind-based power usage.

Wind energy only contributed to 18.8% of the overall electricity production in Denmark in 2004. But 10 years later, this figure has more than doubled. In January 2014 alone, power from wind made up 61.4% of the Danes’ electricity consumption.

“These are incredible figures,” said Denmark’s Climate and Energy Minister Rasmus Helveg Petersen. “We still plan to put up more wind turbines. We are moving forward and we have more targets,” Petersen told the Danish news agency Ritzau.

The energy minister also told the broadcaster DR that the country is firmly on track to meet its emissions and renewable energy targets for 2020, where 50% of overall energy consumption has to come from renewable energy sources. Petersen stated that Denmark has “found the key to stop global warming”.

But the growing amount of wind energy could also prove to have a negative consequence for the Scandinavian country and its consumers, according to Danish Energy, an umbrella organisation representing energy companies.

High production levels mean that the price could deflate, as it would cost energy companies money to get rid of the energy, effectively placing the bill with consumers.

“If we keep putting up wind turbines, we will keep having low prices in the market, which means consumers would have to pay a high price related to their energy consumption. We would have an energy market with large price volatility where some times the price would deflate and at other times, the price would be sky high. it would be an unstable system,” Lars Aagaard, the director for Danish Energy said.

He mentioned that the solution would be to quickly electrify the transport and heating of houses so that energy companies could dispose the wind energy.

According to BusinessGreen, operator National Grid confirmed wind energy set a similar record in the UK last year, with turbines delivering 9.3% of the electricity mix throughout 2014, as total output climbed 15% year-on-year to 28.1TWh.

Background

After marathon talks in October, EU leaders agreed new climate and energy goals for 2030.

They include cutting greenhouse gas by at least 40% versus 1990, and increase energy efficiency and renewables by at least 27%.

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The solution with respect to “excess energy” is almost certainly power to gas – whilst there is an efficiency hit – at least the end result (synthetic methane) is easy to store – given existing storage systems – not least the gas transmission network. This also has the added benefit of reducing EU dependence on gas from less stable regions of the world.

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A Londoner

08/01/2015 13:37

One memory from going sailing is that often when it was coldest there was a dead calm and no wind. How do the Danes manage when the wind stops blowing in winter? The only form of storage I have read about is pump storage which does not seem very suitable for Denmark. Do they to have an enormous amount of back-up capacity?

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NicholB

15/01/2015 16:21

Denmark makes heavy use of pumped storage in Sweden and Norway. This always was a base under their renewable progress. But it looks like they are now going for percentages where other mechanisms will need to be deployed. More electricity, more things with batteries (like cars), more demand management (industry using those cheap peaks of power), and also more storage at different time scales. This gives them a head start in this business.

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Thomas Nowak

10/01/2015 11:19

My memory from going skiing is, that when it is coldest, the sun is shining. “He mentioned that the solution would be to quickly electrify the transport and heating of houses so that energy companies could dispose the wind energy.” The article is a bit short on the solutions that are already used in Denmark: – lots of district heating, increasingly with heat pumps as an energy input – lots of large solar thermal arrays feeding into the district grids – PV systems (you may be surprised that this far north, the sun still provides a lot of energy) –… Read more »

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NicholB

15/01/2015 16:27

Somewhat surprising that this article only mentions wind, and not the percentage of renewables in total.